Labour leadership candidates: profiles and facts

When is the Labour leadership election and who are the contenders? All the
information you need on Jeremy Corbyn, Andy Burnham, Yvetter Cooper and Liz
Kendall

By Telegraph Video, by Kat Hayes and Leon Siciliano

10:43AM BST 22 Jul 2015

The new Labour leader will be announced at the Leadership Conference on Saturday 12 September.

Here are the declared candidates:

Andy Burnham

Having finished fourth out of five in the last leadership contest, the shadow health secretary is the front-runner this time round.

He has strongly opposed further privatisation in the NHS - in contrast to his deputy, Liz Kendall, who is also in the leadership race.

A passionate Everton fan, he won kudos for his role in the last Labour government in securing the reopening of the inquiry into the Hillsborough disaster.

Reuters

But he is potentially vulnerable over his role as health secretary at the time of the Mid Staffs hospital scandal.

Mr Burnham has said he wants Labour to "speak for everyone and for the whole country" and address voters' aspirations the way it did in 1997. He warned it cannot win the next election while people believe it gives the workshy an "easy ride".

Prominent backers include shadow work and pensions secretary Rachel Reeves, Dan Jarvis, a former Army officer who ruled himself out of the leadership contest, and former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott.

Yvette Cooper

The current shadow home secretary served as housing minister, Treasury chief secretary and work and pensions secretary in the last Labour government.

Long tipped to be the party's first woman leader, one potential obstacle to a tilt at the top job - the leadership ambitions of husband Ed Balls - was removed when he was ousted by the voters of Morley and Outwood on election night.

Her links with the Blair-Brown years may nevertheless count against her if the party feels that it needs to make a decisive break with the past.

TMG

Launching her campaign, she rejected calls to "go back to the remedies of the past" that worked for Tony Blair.

Ms Cooper said she wanted Labour to "move beyond the old labels of left and right" and be "credible, compassionate, creative and connected to the day-to-day realities of life".

She has also pledged to revolutionise the way the party supports families by offering free childcare for all.

Among her supporters are former Labour Treasury minister Liam Byrne and shadow culture secretary Chris Bryant.

Liz Kendall

The ambitious shadow health minister was the first to declare her hand in the leadership contest, despite having yet to reach the shadow cabinet.

Part of the 2010 intake of MPs, she will look to appeal to Blairites with her pro-market declaration that "what works" should be the priority for the NHS and her call for the party to reach out to the aspirational middle-classes.

A former special adviser to Harriet Harman and then Patricia Hewitt - whose Commons seat in Leicester she inherited - she may be seen by some as too much of a Westminster insider. Supporters point to her working-class Watford background in her favour.

She has warned that Labour faces being wiped out unless it can offer voters hope for the future and, in a swipe at Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, she has insisted that trade union bosses must not be allowed to decide the outcome of the leadership battle.

Ms Kendall won the backing of former bookies' favourite Chuka Umunna, who dramatically withdrew from the contest just days after announcing his candidacy, Tristram Hunt, who had considered standing, and former Public Accounts Committee chairman Margaret Hodge.

Jeremy Corbyn

The 66-year-old Left-winger said he was running to offer members a "proper choice" .

The Islington North MP has been in Parliament since 1983 and, as vice-chairman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, is a vehement opponent to Trident.